For many vegetable gardeners, the beginning of the growing season each year is a lot like the beginning of the Buckeye football season for football fans, as both groups typically dream of having their best season yet! And while OSU football fans will need to wait several months for the start of the football season, for vegetable gardeners, the next season is almost here! With some thought and planning in some critical areas, you can have your best vegetable garden yet this year.

Here are my top 10 tips for a better vegetable garden in 2023.

10. Know thy bugs – Most gardeners know that there are good bugs and bad bugs in the vegetable garden, and maintaining populations of good bugs will often keep the populations of bad bugs below levels where they cause widespread damage to plants. Most synthetic insecticides will kill the good bugs along with the bad bugs. Gardeners who wish to manage insects in the vegetable garden should consider using an Integrated Pest Management approach where you continually scout the garden for pests and then use cultural and biological controls to keep populations of harmful pests low. Synthetic insecticides in the vegetable garden should only be used when cultural and biological controls fail to keep insect populations low.

April weather good for planting cool-season veggies like lettuce

9. Air out the plants – Proper airflow around plants in the garden can help reduce the incidence of plant diseases, particularly in seasons when we experience extended humid and moist conditions. Proper spacing between plants and rows is critical to helping plants dry out between rainfall events.

Suckering tomatoes and thinning their dense canopy will improve air flow and increase sunlight penetration. This will reduce disease incidence and aid in ripening of fruit. Be sure to make clean cuts, use sharp tools and sanitize tools between uses. While staking and trellising tomatoes will make pruning easier, the use of tomato cages often makes this task much more difficult.These native trees have the pros of Callery pear without the cons

6. Mulch, mulch, mulch – There are many benefits to applying mulch to the vegetable garden, and perhaps the greatest is weed control, particularly between rows and transplants. Organic mulches such as straw, paper, cardboard, cover crop residues, leaves, and wood chips provide the added benefit of adding organic matter to the soil.

5. Recycle nutrients – No matter the type of soil present in your garden, the addition of compost and other organic matter will improve the health of your soil and improve water-holding capacity and root penetration. If you don’t already have a compost pile, consider starting one this season so you can recycle the nutrients and organic matter in your garden.

4. Know your nutrients – Do you know exactly how much fertilizer or lime you need to apply to your vegetable garden this year? While we know the approximate amount of macro-nutrients needed by certain vegetable crops, the only method for figuring out how much of those nutrients are available in the soil is to have your soil tested. Early spring is a good time to have your soil tested. Soil testing information is available at: go.osu.edu/franklinsoiltesting.

cleaning up plant debris and weeds in the fall after a season of hard work and sweat in the garden, but sanitation is critical for control of weeds, insects and disease organisms the following season. Pull out spent plants, rake up dead plant debris and add these materials to the compost pile.

Consider covering the soil in your garden this fall and winter by planting a cover crop in late summer or early fall this year. Cover crops hold soil in place and prevent erosion, add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, and provide a food source for the beneficial microorganisms in the soil.

hogan.1@osu.edu

Source: dispatch.com